Solutions to problems arise through a disciplined, often repetitive choiceto dismissal your own opinion.Over and over if we must, putting aside our precious, prized and certain opinionand instead favoring in our minds clear, unedited observations of things.

When we put aside "how we want the things to be"and instead study closely "how the things are,"it is then that solutions we seek will have the space in the mind to grow.

The gift of love is not a simultaneous promise that an easier life will start coming your way.

It is, in fact, the opposite:the gift of love is, in many ways, not a gift at all,but rather a privilege we protect, a treasure we must maintain,a service to our soul we must pay for;for over and over the bill comes due,paid off through the surrender of personal pleasures which we previously treasured while we were all alone and loveless.